RVC Weekly Newsletter

The Blockchain Wave @ ACS 2018

The Angel Capital Summit is now a week away! One of the things that I am the most excited to learn more about is the growing innovation in Blockchain technologies. Last night, John Oliver discussed this exploding industry, hilariously calling out the often ridiculous hype that surrounds cryptocurrencies. Next Tuesday, the Angel Capital Summit will feature a panel of 4 Industry Expertsthat are either actively investing in this space or are building companies that leverage blockchain technologies. Meet them now!!

During this cluster we will be focusing on the last couple of steps when it comes to fundraising for and funding startup companies. We will start with Due Diligence. While this is often considered a dry subject, it is essential for entrepreneurs to understand an investor’s motivations and prepare appropriately so that they maintain momentum in the fundraising process. It is also important for investors as those that preform >40hrs. of due diligence have a significantly better chance of seeing 10x returns. After due diligence we will move into Term Sheets, understanding the key terms, how to avoid dilution on both sides of the table, as well as key points of negotiation.

The Women’s Investor Network and Next Wave Impact Fund co-host a facilitated meeting for impact entrepreneurs to discuss difficulties, successes, and strategy to grow their companies. Discussions are focused around the key challenges, especially the fundraising process. Attendees help one another with strategy, actions for getting funded, leads and contacts, support and holding each other accountable for achieving goals.

Knowing what to look for in an entrepreneur’s pitch is essential to becoming a successful angel investor, especially when you have the opportunity to hear multiple pitches in one session. Join WIN Director, Barbara Bauer, and Rockies Venture Fund General Partner, Kevin Morningstar, to learn how to evaluate the elements of a short pitch that make a venture worthy of further due diligence.

A deep dive is an opportunity for investors interested in learning more about a company to spend 2 hours asking all of the important questions they want to know before making an investment. At this event investors will be diving into Tejon Technologies, one of the companies that went through RVC’s HyperAccelerator program in January. Tejon Technologies is doing to databases what WordPress does to websites. By offering an extremely flexible no-code database development platform, the product, TejonBT enables business analysts and consultants to build enterprise-grade databases and end-user business software.

The Angel Capital Summit is the largest angel investing event in Colorado. Now in its 11th year this summit promises to be one of the best yet and we are excited to have Divya Narendra and Andre Durand as ourkeynote speakers. Divya is the founder of Sum Zero and helped start ConnectU, the inspiration for Facebook.

Following the Angel Capital Summit we will discuss all of the companies that will be pitching at the event. This will be an opportunity to learn from other investors, share experience, and help determine which companies will move forward in RVC’s process. This event is free and open to all accredited investors.

To increase diversity in our investing community, we have established the Women’s Investor Network, led by entrepreneur leader Barbara T. Bauer. The purpose of WIN is to engage women with an engaged community, new programs, and educational content.

Our friends over at Bigfoot Capital are doing some customer/market discovery and have asked for our support in getting some feedback from our network. They’ve put together a 3-minute survey to hear your experiences and thoughts around capitalizing your company. If you can take 3 minutes to fill out their survey, they and we would appreciate the support!

Founders Institute Demo Day3/13 | Industry RiNo | 5:00 PM

The Founder Institute, the World’s Largest Startup Accelerator, has been operating in Denver since 2010, graduating nearly 50 local technology companies in that time. On March 13th, we will gather top graduates in the process of fundraising to demo their products to the public.

Come see which startup will get an EQUITY-FREE GRANT to help them continue to grow!If you are an accredited investor you can register for the investor preview here

Join 700+ angels at the ACA Summit for a great program, with many new session topics and speakers. Highlights for seven tracks and half-tracks include impact investing, what to know about artificial intelligence, cyber security and blockchain, and using data to improve your investing performance, among 30 topics. 24 amazing startup founders will also join us at the Innovation Showcase. Register by February 12 to get the early bird discount, saving members $80.All RVC Investor Members are also ACA Members!

Each year, the NREL Industry Growth Forum recruits the most innovative, emerging clean energy start-up companies from across the globe to apply to present. We accept applicants ranging from prototype-stage to commercially ready with a renewable energy or energy efficiency technology solution. As such, presenting prototype, pre-commercial, and later stage companies have collectively raised over $6.4 Billion in growth financing since 2003. At last year’s IGF, we had about 400 attendees including over 100 investors, which facilitated over 900 meetings.

The RVC Insight Network leverages the wisdom of crowds effect to help drive a better due diligence process, identify experts for deal screening, and to match startup companies with individuals that possess industry and position expertise.